


Profanity, When Denied Prayer

by sinuous_curve



Series: A Concept By Which You Measure [5]
Category: Marvel Avengers Movies Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Community: kink_bingo, D/s, Kinky Self Harm, M/M, Phone Calls & Telephones, Phone Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-03
Updated: 2012-11-03
Packaged: 2017-11-17 16:33:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/553622
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sinuous_curve/pseuds/sinuous_curve
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Bruce has to be emotionally aware. There really isn’t another option, because when he loses track of where he is it becomes a matter of national security. </i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Profanity, When Denied Prayer

**Author's Note:**

> Prompted by locketofyourhair.

Bruce _has_ to be emotionally aware. 

There really isn’t another option, because when he loses track of where he is it becomes a matter of national security. And yes, Tony has come up with a wide and almost impressive variety of new anti-Hulk measures. (“In case of emergency,” he insists every single time he shows one to Bruce, his expression clearly caught somewhere between pride, curiosity and nascent embarrassment.) 

But. No one wants to need to use them. 

But, if Bruce is being honest, he cares a lot less about the potential for the breaking one of New York’s boroughs than he did a year ago. That worry has gotten subsumed beneath the knowledge of what he is and isn’t _allowed_ to do. 

The problem is that Clint is somewhere that is not the Tower. Or the city. Or the helicarrier. Or any place that Bruce can get to him. His and Natasha’s covert ops missions for SHIELD have dramatically slowed down since the Avengers made their entrance onto the national stage. But they are still SHIELD’s best and brightest and occasionally something happens that has to be dealt with by the best. 

So Clint is god knows where, and Bruce’s skin is trying crawl off his bones. And he has tried the things that sometimes help, yoga and meditation and even goddamn weed and gotten nowhere but sitting in the dark in his room with anger clawing at the bottom of his throat. It’s always anger. 

It’s because he found out Ross is getting another star on his uniform. Bruce knows that, logically. There has never been anything logical about this.

Bruce knows where the caustic chemicals are in his lab, and he knows where the acids are. He knows where a truly stunning array of weapons are kept in the tower with only minimal barriers to him getting access. As though someone who was successfully on the run from the government for several years has no ability to override those systems. 

He also knows the rules. 

It’s a good half hour where Bruce sits with his back against the wall and doesn’t know what he’s going to do. He survived for a good, long time with just himself, until Bruce came down to his lab that day and changed everything. And it wasn’t perfect, but it was enough, and sometimes the things he doesn’t know about what Bruce wants drive him into spirals of frustration and need. 

The thing he misses most about who he is when he’s not like _this_ is the way logic comes so easily. How it’s pros and cons, evidence and conclusions, experimentation and tangible results instead of the awful, illogical crush of feeling his bones expand outward in millimeters and wondering whether he’s imagining the green shadows on his skin. 

What does he get from dropping acid on his arm? A step back from the ledge. 

What does he get from calling Clint? 

Bruce bites at his thumbnail and tastes the sudden copper warmth of blood. He gets _hurt_.

When Clint handed him the cell out of nowhere maybe three months into this, all he said was, “Even SHIELD doesn’t know about and can’t track that,” and when Bruce checked there was only one number listed. Bruce keeps it on him even when he forgets both his theoretical civilian phone and his SHIELD/Avenger communicator. It’s in his back pocket and Bruce’s hands shake as he presses the only programmed speed dial number and cradles the cell to his ear. 

He only hears half of the first ring. “Bruce?”

There is a tangible feeling of gut-deep, bone-deep, helpless lizard brain relief at hearing Clint’s voice. Bruce understands Pavlovian conditioning, and can even track the progression of an emotional association between that voice and his own stability. Which changes nothing at all about the strength of his reaction. 

“Please.” Bruce closes his eyes and tips his head back against the wall. “Please, I need. Permission. Please.”

There is, really, only one static rule. Bruce doesn’t get to do what Clint does. 

“Where are you?” Clint asks. 

“My room.”

There’s a moment’s pause, and then the sound of a door closing and the very faint buzzing hum of a light flicking on. Bruce almost asks where Clint is, but swallows it down. It both isn’t within his purview to need to know and doesn’t matter. “What do you have on you?”

Bruce’s hand falls to his side. “A knife.” 

“How long?”

“I don’t know. Four inches, maybe.”

“Did you use it?” Clint asks, his voice flat and unforgiving. 

Bruce shakes his head. “No, I didn’t. I--” He trails off, leaving the word abandoned and the sentence unfinished. He wonders if Clint can hear the _I was good_ that was almost said, and if it makes a difference to him. Bruce wonders how imminently practical this arrangement still is to Clint. He wonders if he feels the unstable, shifting foundation they stand on, too. 

Clint doesn’t offer any acknowledgement of Bruce’s obedience other than through his lack of rebuke. “I’m going to let you hurt yourself,” he says. Bruce has fetishized those words as much as a priest repeating Hail Marys with a scourge on his back. “Pick up the knife.”

Bruce tucks the cell between his ear and shoulder. The knife’s handle is wrapped in smooth, much handled leather. He got it in South America, stuck it in his pocket every day for a year and never once opened the blade. He’s not. Bruce isn’t violent. Which people, even people like the Avengers, don’t really believe. 

“I have it,” Bruce says. 

“Okay.” Clint inhales and exhales, just like he does when they’re in their room. Right before he starts. “Make a cut high on the side of your arm, right below your elbow. Break the skin, but do not go deeper than that.”

The edge of the knife has been sharpened multiple times since Bruce moved into the tower. He gave it to Clint in a -- sideways way. Bruce kept it in his pocket and eventually Clint found it, looked it, slapped Bruce across the face, and took it. He’s fairly sure they were both cognizant of the deliberation involved, but. They don’t tend to sit down and talk about that kind of thing.)

Bruce lines it up half an inch below the bend in his elbow. 

He’s a doctor (yes, a PhD doctor, not an MD doctor, but at least three fourths of the world doesn’t understand the difference anyway) and he read enough in those dark days to have a thorough understanding of how the human body works. He knows that widthwise cuts on the inside of an arm are, at best, an inefficient way to kill yourself. But still, there’s another kind of fetishism that comes from seeing a blade _there_. Vast swathes of pop culture have imprinted a significance. 

“Okay,” Bruce says. 

He presses down. 

Even in the very dim light, his blood has that bright, impossible red color to it. It beads up along the two inch line and a very little bit wells over and trickles outward toward his elbow. Logic, his oldest and best friend, knows why it feels so hot. Bruce shudders hard anyway, rolling his shoulders in.

His bones, unwillingly, contract minutely back down to their normal size. 

“Bruce.” Clint’s voice is so goddamn steady in his ear. 

“Yes.” Bruce’s voice is not. 

“I’m giving you permission to do five more,” Clint says. “Are you ready?”


End file.
